thinkbroadband

The 2008 year has certainly been eventful with the global credit crisis taking grip and affecting every single industry, but what has it meant for broadband? What new innovative applications will
be developed in the next twelve months? These are the questions we ask as each year draws to a close.

The broadband provider consolidation has continued over 2008 with Tiscali still touting itself for sale, a conglomerate of ex-Pipex brands as part of it. Only as recently as three months ago,
Cable & Wireless finalised their purchase of Thus Group Plc, and Demon Internet with it. We expect some takeovers in the first half of 2009 with the pressures of BT price increases announced in November, putting more pressure on some
business models.

Broadband Speeds

Ofcom launched the Broadband Speeds Code of Practice which took effect earlier this month, a voluntary scheme which expects providers to do what to be quite honest, they should have been doing
long ago; being open and honest with their customers. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of the scheme, although we are starting to see some improvements in how service providers are
structuring their processes.

After lengthy trials, Virgin Media finally launched its 50 meg broadband service
only last week in what can best be described as challenging market conditions, setting a new bar for broadband connections. We certainly expect this to be the market leader for the next six months in
terms of speed with the vague possibility that Be/O2 might offer something in that region through their bonded broadband solution, although the real loser is likely to be Sky because of the attractiveness of Virgin
Media's television, broadband and phone bundles, especially when they get some more HD channels onto their service. We think (and hope) VM's 50 meg service is likely to perform very well and we'll be
keeping a close eye on it over the next few months to let you know; if you want to help us, why not carry out a speed test and download our
bandwidth meter (tbbMeter) application.

The state of broadband in terms of proper fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) is still disappointing with only signs of deployments in Ebbsfleet and some H20 Networks rollouts in a few areas. No matter what
services we come up with, it's fairly certain that fibre optic cables will be the future of our communications infrastructure and the sooner this goes in, the quicker we can get the next generation
of communications services from an increased number of high definition television channels, other entertainment services, to high definition video conferencing and super-fast broadband where the idea
of waiting for downloads is a historical concept. Even with the proposed BT fibre rollouts bundled with VDSL technology, the ultimate solution is still likely to be end-to-end fibre. The problem of
course, is the investment required which no commercial company with shareholders to please is going to do lightly without a clear sign of significant returns on investment. This is likely to require
some involvement by the government in one form or another at some point.

Our Site

Our focus for 2009 is going to be on updating our site to really change the focus to you, the user. We're going to be trying to ensure, more so than ever, that we don't just provide you with
information that may be technically of the highest calibre, but which not all our users understand. Over the last couple of years we have made significant efforts to try and speak in 'plain english'
but we think the tools on our site aren't quite up to scratch in this respect. We will however assure you that we will continue in making sure we give you information which is 'technically
right'.

We're going to continue to build on tbbMeter, our bandwidth monitoring application to help you understand your broadband usage both in terms of levels and quality so you can make the best decision
on which package and supplier is right for you as well as adjusting your usage patterns to avoid being slowed down because you download too much at peak times.

We'll also be publishing more videos which discuss broadband issues as well as instructional videos to help you make the most out of your broadband connection. We have so many ideas we can't wait
to share with you, but there are only so many hours in a day, more so given most of us produce all this whilst maintaining full time jobs elsewhere. We do this because we're passionate about giving
you the best information and doing the 'right' thing.

Over the next year, we will continue to help users solve their problems as the broadband experts in a market filled with so many suppliers of broadband services and probably even more sites trying
to advise you as to which service provider is right for you (along with which credit card, insurance or energy supplier you should use it would seem). We'll leave it to the other sites to tell you
what electricity company to go for and focus on what we know best; broadband.

We often get called a 'comparison site' in the media in the same way as we were labelled a consumer campaign site in the days of campaigns for broadband coverage or unmetered telecoms—Our focus
has never been on persuading you to change broadband suppliers. We want to be the definitive source of broadband related information and analysis, respected for the knowledge we have built up and on
which our advice is based, as well as being able to help you with your broadband problems. Our staff and volunteers are very dedicated and have a wide ranging knowledge base from the underlying
intricacies of the IP protocol on which the Internet runs, to the commercial experience of broadband services & pricing and the problems users come across trying to access support services. We
hope that this complements rather than duplicates existing sources of information on the Internet.

We'd like to thank everyone on the team without whom none of this would be possible, and the users who make this site such an interesting project for us to work on. We appreciate all the e-mails
of support we regularly get from users who find a solution to their problems on our site.

Comments

Posted by
tonysweatman over 8 years ago
I have tried the tbb meter and found it excellent BUT... I have now consigned to the trash can. Why? I did not appreciate the sudden noise emitted at 5am one morning when I passed the 1 Gig download point. It awoke the whole household - Can I have a 'silent' version please?

Posted by
bluetroll over 8 years ago
You can always either disable any or all of the alarms or, alternatively, set the sound to "(none)" on any active alarms.

Posted by
seb ( staff member)
over 8 years ago
Tony--We'll get a "disable all sounds" option added ;)

Posted by
warweezil over 8 years ago
I wonder why it is that it feels like BT is trying to push us back into metered connectivity? After the BTw price hike, as a victim of the BT monopoly on my market 1 exchange I wonder why OFCOM dont seem to be protecting the consumer from predatory pricing. I have no choice but to take the pain as ISPs raise prices or cut allowances or a combination of both as a result of BT's greed.

Posted by
CARPETBURN over 8 years ago
Im not going to whine about the regular Pipex/Tiscali/Virgin etc etc part of the story and the clowns that they are. Im going to remain postive and say i hope 2009 is as sucessful for the site as 2008 has been and look forward to any further great ideas staff and site developers come up with. A Happy New Year to Sebastien & John all the other staff and those that help the site in general may you all keep up the fantastic work :)

Posted by
comnut over 8 years ago
TBB staff: If you are going to update the site tools, how about adding a few thing desperately needed by this part??? eg...

- edit old posts (5 hour time limit!)
- private messaging (use the code in the forum!)
- time & date for each post, instead of just how long ago..
- color, font, URL tools...

- or just put all of it in a new section of the forum, with only a link to the front page...

Posted by
seb ( staff member)
over 8 years ago
comnut - This isn't supposed to be a fully fledged discussion forum (although that in itself is something we should probably look at doing from a news link perspective; This isn't a private e-mail system so the forum is the right venue for private messages; I see no issue with time/date being shown; as for colours/fonts, again it's not needed for most things and would just result in more people trying to grab attention; similarly URLs would result in more spamming attempts for SEO.

Posted by
seb ( staff member)
over 8 years ago
(I was wondering who was going to suggest longer comments? :-p)

Posted by
Somerset over 8 years ago
And posters using polite English with some backup to their statements!

Posted by
nickandjayne over 8 years ago
As a non techie user I appreciate the plain language and simplicity of navigation on your site. I was also impressed with the quick response to the 2009 error. Thank you for your hard work and I wish you all the best for 2009.

Posted by
CARPETBURN over 8 years ago
quote"And posters using polite English with some backup to their statements!"

Agreed bad form to start a sentence with "AND" isnt it? ;)

Posted by
madkingsoup over 8 years ago
How about some new hardware reviews? The current ones are a bit aged...

Posted by
RegNirrab over 8 years ago
No it isn't bad form.
Starting a sentence with "and" (which is, strictly, a conjunction) refers to a rather outdated, simplified, and inflexible version of junior school grammar rules. It's perfectly OK in an adult forum ;o)
Happy New Year to all (which is not a proper sentence either!)

Posted by
Dixinormous over 8 years ago
As I mentioned on the forums a great comment from a staffer at another broadband site regarding BT's progress far: 'Last I heard, it was more fiber to the press release, followed by some hemming and hawing and backtracking by the telco?'

Posted by
CARPETBURN over 8 years ago
quote"How about some new hardware reviews? The current ones are a bit aged..."

Agreed some newer reviews of equipment, especially that which is used in large numbers (IE Netgear, speedtouch and even BTs home hub and VM new router/modem 50Mb device) would be nice and with the new video section im sure would be very popular.

Posted by
nstrudwick over 8 years ago
TBB staff: can we have a Mac version please?

Posted by
CARPETBURN over 8 years ago
Enjoyed the new iplate video, cant wait for more little reviews like that :)